


A Broken Blade

by Fractiouskat



Category: Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando (Video Games), Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss
Genre: Alternate Universe, Everyone Needs Therapy, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Father of the year award, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stabbing, nobody is getting therapy, the sergeants are fightinggggg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29929299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fractiouskat/pseuds/Fractiouskat
Summary: Don't wake sleeping commandos.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	A Broken Blade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Detroitbydark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Detroitbydark/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Tell Me That Your Soul Lies Now](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26672398) by [Detroitbydark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Detroitbydark/pseuds/Detroitbydark). 



> When the fanfic is so good, it gets its own fanfic...
> 
> Thank you to the amazing DetroitByDark for letting me play in her sandbox! This piece is a one-shot set before her incredible 'Tell Me That Your Soul Lies Now', which anyone with a love of the RC boys should check out. 
> 
> As a short summary/background, former Cuy'val Dar sergeant Walon Vau has managed to rescue assumed MIA/KIA RC-1207, Sev, from a year of brutal slavery after his capture on Kashyyyk. The traumatized commando is reunited with his pod brother Scorch, and the utterly dysfunctional family dynamic at Kyrimorut immediately becomes a disaster waiting to happen.
> 
> And then it *does* happen.

  
  


Sev was dreaming.

It wasn’t a  _ bad _ dream, per ce. Not something he’d qualify as a nightmare, but still. It was Kashyyyk. Nothing good ever came from that stinking, humid, moldy hell hole. 

He could smell it, feel the sweat slick in the creases of his joints. He was armored this time, though, his crimson-spattered Katarn feeling like a second skin over his blacks. He moved like a predator through the dark corridors, deece warm in his hands, on high alert but not encountering any resistance or signs of life through the interface of his HUD. He was too far from his squadmates to see their statuses on his display, but their chatter was murmuring background noise in his comms. He felt… steady. Grounded. On track. Alive.

He paused to open a door, slinking into the small room beyond to clear it. It was empty. He turned to leave, and- 

_ CRASH _

_ “Ah fek-” _

Adrenaline spiked hard in his brain- kriffing hell, something had the drop on him, he hadn't seen a heat signature, hadn’t heard a karking thing, but it was just suddenly  _ there, _ too close for him to get the long barrel of his deece around to unload into it. He grabbed blindly and felt his hands connect with his attacker.

_ “Sev! Sevsevsevohsevenit’sme- _ ”

It had to be a Trandoshan- the grip was too strong to be anything else. His panicked brain filled in the gaps in sensation- he could feel claws gripping and pulling to find the gaps in his armor, the hot sour stench of reptilian breath in his face. He dug in. Scorch's voice was yelling through his coms, all high pitched and distorted. Fek, he hadn't heard Boss or Fixer, his brothers must be overrun, he had to get to them, had to get the drop on this Trandoshan piece of shit and get to the RV point. He abandoned his deece and went for the knife holstered in his greave.

_ “Stop, stop it Sev, it’s Scorch, dammit, it’s me, stop- _ ”

\- and then, oh  _ yes, _ there was the effortless friction of his blade sliding home into unprotected flesh, as slick and supple as silk. The sensation roused a feral kind of bliss at the base of his skull.

Then he heard Scorch scream.

It crackled in his subconscious like he’d touched a live wire, turning the hit of violent pleasure into the shuddering horror of fingernails against a duracrete wall. 

“ _ Sarge!!" _

Sarge?

No, Vau wasn't here, that didn’t make sense. The metallic stink of blood filled his sinuses. His hand clenched around the knife he had buried hilt-deep in the Trando, trying to find enough purchase to rip it sideways through the reptile's guts, when suddenly there were  _ more _ hands on him, gripping hard at his wrist, no, no no get off get off get off get off-

" _ Stop!" _

Something stabbed into the meat of his shoulder and he heard himself grind out a yell. His whole arm went numb. He felt his unresponsive fingers being pried off the hilt of his knife. None of what he was seeing and feeling made sense, where the kark was he,  _ buir  _ couldn't be here, it- where- where- where-

_ "He didn't mean it, sarge, he didn't mean it, I startled him-" _

_ "Quit talking, six-eight." _

The disorienting stench and mossy blur of Kashyyyk faded, burned off like fog as the light from the  _ karyai  _ spilled in from the open door of the bedroom. Bedroom. Home, then. He was here, home, with his brother, with his  _ buir. _ Someone was fiercely gripping the hair at the back of his head, baring his throat and forcing his eyes to the ceiling. The stink of panic sweat and blood hit him all at once. 

“Where’s his knife?”

“Secure, sir.”

_ "Where?” _

“Ah… somewhere around my kidney, I think.”

He swallowed, feeling panic squeezing his throat like a vice even as his vision started to swim. “Scorch?”

“I’m right here, Sev. I’m right here.” His brother had that quavering edge to his voice that only came out when he was hurt and trying to hide it. And then the hands holding his hair released and he was able to tip his head down to see the room. 

Scorch was on the floor in front of him like he’d been shoved backwards and stayed down. His crest of bleached curls was rumpled into a fluffy mess and he was panting like he’d run ten miles in full kit, all wild-eyed and feral with the neck of his shirt stretched out beyond repair.

He heard Vau’s voice from somewhere behind him, a deep blur of syllables he couldn’t put meaning to. The room started to spin. Kriff, what… 

His brain felt heavy in his skull. Strange. Cold? Cold except for his hand- it felt like he’d held it too close to a flame, all hot and tingling. He dragged his lagging eyes downwards to look at it.

Straight out of his dream, the face of his helmet looked back up at him. 

No. Not his helmet.

It was his hand, palm up, bloodied and dark. 

Every other sensation shorted out like he’d taken a shot to the bucket and lost his coms, lost his filtration, lost everything except the shining reflection of slick wet blood, glistening with points of light like dark rubies. 

_ Beautiful. _

\-------

The bedroom door slammed shut with a tooth-clattering bang. After two months of tiptoeing around their wing of Kyrimorut so as not to set off his freshly-reacquired son, it felt like screaming into a bomb crater.

"Idiot child,” Walon barked. He had a firm grip on Scorch’s arm and used it to drag him across the open space of the  _ karyai. _ “What were you  _ thinking?” _

“I karked it up, sarge, I’m sorry,” came his son’s uncharacteristically meek reply. He looked like a whipped massiff, all big eyes and nervous grin as Walon pushed him to lean against the edge of the thick-topped table. “I was just trying to get last night’s dishes out of there and I fumbled a bowl. He didn’t mean it.”

Walon growled under his breath and busied his hands with Scorch’s shirt. The knife had punched through and pinned the garment to his body- he couldn’t take it off without pulling the knife out, and he was far from ready to do  _ that _ yet. He drew his own blade and delicately widened the hole in the already ruined shirt, then sliced it downwards with a practiced pull. He repeated the process upwards to the collar, the soft fabric yielding like butter under the honed edge. He muttered a foul string of curses at the sight of the wound and wagged his own knife scoldingly in Scorch’s face. “For a blabbering idiot with a  _ history  _ of making  _ stupid karking decisions, _ this one tops the list.”

“At... least we both still have our eyebrows?” Scorch went a little crosseyed at the point of his _buir’s_ weapon an inch from his nose. “Unless you’re planning on shaving mine off.”

“You mouthy-”

“Is everything all right?” 

Both Walon and Scorch’s heads snapped up. Corr’s unmistakable high-and-tight and one ungloved prosthetic hand were peeking around the door from the Skiratas’ wing of the complex- the trooper’s eyes went big as dets as he took in the scene.

“Oh  _ shit. _

Scorch’s face split into a mad grin. “So… Remember when I said the  _ cu’bikad _ gets real intense on this side of the  _ yaim?" _

Corr’s eyes flicked in rapid-fire sequence from Scorch, to the bloody puddle growing under the table, to the knife in his gut, to the knife in his  _ face _ \- until it landed on Vau’s twitching snarl. He shrunk back with a wince.

“Get.  _ OUT.” _

“Yessirsorrysir!”

His boots beat a frantic retreat down the hallway. Walon hissed out a tense sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Don’t bite his head off, sarge. He’s short on original parts as it-”

“Stop talking, Scorch,” he spat, slamming his knife down on the wooden tabletop with a bang. “Just... stop talking.”

Walon hadn't seen the brawl- not much of it, anyway- but he could read the mechanism of injury like a set of tracks in fresh snow. Sev had slotted the knife backhanded under the trailing edge of Scorch's ribcage. He’d been twisting the blade to take it sideways through his brother's guts when they'd subdued him. 

He knew the technique. He’d been the one to teach it to him. It was very specifically how you gutted a Trandoshan.

No question of where Sev's dreams had taken him, then.

And no question of how close Scorch had come to a gory evisceration, either. He stifled that particular line of thought and concentrated on the mess at hand- or all over his hands, as it were. 

There really was an awful lot of blood. He probed practiced fingers against the base of the knife, and a flood of it poured out from around the blade- he cursed and looked around for something, anything close at hand. The shredded remains of the shirt Scorch had gingerly shrugged out of would have to do for now.

"I can't fix this,  _ ad’ika," _ he admitted, sighing yet again. “We're going to have to call Mij."

"He's gonna shit a kitten."

"If he's less than gentle, I'm pretending I didn't see a thing."

"Heh." Scorch paused then, letting his eyes go a bit unfocused into the middle-distance. He swallowed audibly. "It's… starting to hurt, sarge."

He bit back a sharp retort. His  _ ad _ looked ashen and drawn, for all his ridiculous attempts at humor. The steady stream of blood down his side had replaced the steady stream of chatter from his mouth, which ratcheted Vau's concern higher yet. The former had thoroughly soaked the leg of his pants and was puddling under his boot. 

Kriffing damn it all to hell.

"There's painkillers in the medbay." 

"Ok.”

“All right, then. You keep this pressed here-” He took Scorch’s hand and guided it to the fabric he’d balled around the protruding hilt. “Just like that. Do you think you can walk?”

“Yes, sarge.”

He took him by his arm again, gentler this time, and helped him find his feet. Scorch didn’t make a peep as they made their way down the main hallway towards the medbay.

And then Corr’s intrusion caught up with them.

Five of the Skirata clan- three Nulls, Fi, and Corr- were barricading the hallway, with Ordo front and center, arms crossed. 

Vau gritted his teeth but didn’t stop. As they got close enough, Fi and Corr broke ranks and advanced, grabbing Scorch from his supporting grip to take his weight themselves.

“Come on, let’s get him through.”

“Kriff, Scorch, you’re bleeding everywhere.”

“Guys- aw come on, it’s not that bad- guys put me down-”

Ordo didn’t so much block his path as angle alongside him, trying to draw Vau’s eyes. “Where’s Sev?”

“He’s not your concern,” Vau snapped, irritated at his loss of control.

“It absolutely  _ is _ my concern,” Ordo returned, chin set stubbornly in an obnoxiously accurate mimicry of his _ buir. _ “Where is he?”

“Sedated, and not your problem.”

Ordo’s burly shoulders shifted subtly, releasing his tension as the whole pack made it to the medbay. Scorch was back to chatting up a storm, his chipper demeanor in full force- if not full volume- in the presence of his  _ vode. _

"I got Sev a new knife sheath for his decant day. Kaminii made. High quality. It even talks."

"It never fucking shuts up,” muttered Kom’rk as he grabbed for Scorch’s legs to help heft him onto the exam table.

"It's a feature."

"It's a bug."

“All right, settle,” Vau commanded. The room went silent. “Someone get me-” he gestured at the drawers under the counter, and Prudii snapped to it to fetch him some gauze. “Yes. That.” He peeled back the soaking red shirt to look at the wound again.

“You’re looking a quart low,  _ vod," _ came Kom’rk’s deep rumble.

The rustling of four clones rolling up their sleeves in tandem checked some box in Walon’s brain that sent him from  _ everything is under control  _ to  _ everyone needs to leave. _

“Stop. Stop, stop,  _ stop." _ The med bay went silent, save for Scorch’s sub-vocal grumbling. “There are too many cooks in this godforsaken kitchen. I need  _ one _ volunteer for a transfusion. I need someone to call Mij. I need you all to make sure Mird stays outside if it comes back before dark. And I need  _ no one _ to bother Kal with this."

Well. At least the whole lot of them had the dignity to feign blank-faced innocence, but Prudii blinked first. Walon sighed. 

“How long do I have before he gets here?”

“... Mij?”

“No, you imbecile, your good for nothing  _ buir, _ since I’m assuming he’s already been commed.”

Ordo gave up the ghost. “He was in Enceri. I’m not sure if they cut and ran, but if they did… fly-time.”

“Wonderful. Just wonderful. You’ve been an  _ incredible _ help.”

"Mij was called too," Prudii offered. "ETA's about twenty."

"Small mercies," Vau muttered, digging through the medication cabinet to find a pre-drawn hypo of analgesic. He discreetly pocketed a sedative, as well. He turned back to find a shuffling crowd of clones still filling the room and felt his temper hit its peak. "Right. Who is actually contributing?"

Ordo raised the sterile transfusion kit in one hand.

Vau nodded curtly. "Unless you're bleeding, helping, or Mij,  _ get out." _

They didn't grumble about it, but the gathered  _ vode  _ certainly didn't double-time their way out. He ignored the fact that they cleared the room just to cluster outside the door, and set to work, pulling up one of the rolling stools and lowering the table so it was closer to the height of a bed. Ordo moved to sit on the edge of it at Scorch's hip.

"Aw not Ordo," Scorch whined, closing his eyes briefly at the sting of the hypo in his arm. "I'll have Skirata trying to read me bedtime stories if I take too much of his golden boy."

" _ Udesii," _ Vau muttered, tossing the spent syringe at the sink. "Is that more tolerable, ad'ika?"

"Mmf. Yep. That…" Scorch shifted a little, looking loose limbed and relaxed as the analgesic took effect. "Was that a lot? Feels like a lot."

"It wasn't a little."

"Mmm…"

The medbay fell silent. After a moment, Vau let out a massive sigh. 

"All right, Ordo, give me your arm."

Skirata's  _ ad _ complied wordlessly, balling his hand into a fist and holding it out towards the sergeant. Vau pulled on a pair of gloves and busied himself with wiping down the null's forearm with disinfectant. Lips tightened into a firm line, he traced the network of prominent veins, feeling for one he felt he could stick without issue. 

"Sir, with respe-"

"I don't recall asking for your opinion," Vau said coldly, not pausing in his prodding. "Now stop distracting me. This isn't my specialty."

  
  


\-------

  
  


Even with the chilly bite of late autumn in the air, there was a greeting party outside the door when Kal and A’den made landfall.

“Sitrep?” he called, hustling his bones into a slow jog as he caught sight of the crowd.

“Sev got a knife in Scorch,” Prudii enunciated carefully over the hissing wind, lowering his tone as Kal made it closer. Atin opened the door for them all and stood aside as they passed through- Corr was waiting just inside the hallway beyond. The thick door shut firmly behind them, blocking out the cold, and Kal stopped to stomp the mud off of his boots. 

“Is he all right?”

“Gilamar’s been working on him for about half an hour,” Atin replied. Kal stopped to look up at all four of his sons, reading their expressions with guarded concern. “He bled like a stuck roba.”

“Where’s Ordo?”

“With them. Scorch needed a transfusion. I’m next up if they need more,” added Prudii. 

“Hell, was it that bad?” The four clones’ faces each quirked into a different wince of reluctant confirmation. Kal rubbed a hand over his jaw. “What  _ happened?" _

“Don’t know for sure,” said Atin. “Corr heard a fracas and went to check-”

Corr picked up the thread and ran with it. “- And Vau’s got a knife in his face-”

“Vau  _ what?” _

“I think he was cutting his shirt off, but he was threatening him with it-”

“- and Scorch was bleeding like hell-”

_ "Udesii, _ _ udesii, _ all right.” Kal’s expression darkened. “Where is Sev?”

The group all looked at each other, mentally rock-paper-scissoring. Kom’rk took the initiative. “Drugged. I think Vau got a sedative in him. We went and cleaned up their side and put him to bed. Don’t think he’ll be up for a while. He was a drooling mess.”

“I’m assuming you went  _ armed,”  _ the patriarch grumbled.

“We’re crazy, not suicidal,” Corr quipped. “Atin stayed with the wives and kids. The rest of us mopped with extreme prejudice, sir. Fi’s watching the medbay and keeping us updated.”

“Sound strategy. Good lads,” Kal said. He huffed out an uneasy breath. “Something has to change. That one…” He shook his head. “I need to talk to Walon.”

“We don’t envy you there,” came Prudii’s grumble from the back. “He’s a right bastard at the moment.”

“He’s always a bastard, but I can’t say I blame him right now.” His sons parted ranks to let him through, marching at his back like overgrown bodyguards towards the center of the sprawling  _ yaim. _ He shook out of his heavy jacket and tossed it onto a bench in the kitchen as they passed, then made the turn towards the lab and medical suite.

Fi was leaning against the wall and stood to attention as he noticed him- Kal nodded and waved him off. Beyond where his son had been standing, the door to the medbay opened to spill bright white light into the darker hall beyond. Ordo stepped through a moment later, rolling his sleeve back down over his bandaged forearm. He saw Kal and straightened up, his expression tight and unreadable. 

Kal laid a firm hand on his elbow. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,  _ buir.” _

“Go get yourself something to eat. I think I saw a plate of rolls in the kitchen when I went by.”

“I will.”

Kal held his eyes for a moment and gave his arm a squeeze- a silent ‘thank you’- then cut his son loose and headed into the medbay.

Mij was at the sink, soaping his hands clean. He turned and caught Kal’s eye and sent him a tight-lipped nod. Kal returned it. “Thank you for coming out.”

“I’ve already done the apologizing,” Walon snapped. He sat perched at the head of the cot, arms crossed tightly over his chest. With his black clothes and sharp features, he looked for all the world like an irritated, pompous vulture. The smear of blood across his gaunt cheek didn’t make any suggestions to the contrary, either.

Kal gritted his teeth and ignored him. Mij did much the same, though with a bit more grace than Kal had the energy to muster. “It’s too late for me to get back home at a decent hour, so I’ll be staying the night. I want to check on him in the morning as well.”

“We’ll make sure to save you a spot at breakfast,” Kal replied. Mij ran a damp hand through his silver hair, slicking it back, and took his leave.

Kal leaned casually against the counter, crossing his feet at the ankle, and fixed Vau with a look.

“What happened?”

There was a long, pregnant pause. Vau was visibly weighing his words. “Scorch startled him awake.”

Kal sighed. “Kriff. That's not good, Walon.”

“Are you going to contribute anything I'm not already  _ very  _ aware of?”

“Probably not. But it bears repeating.”

“It doesn't.” 

"It does. This isn't something new, Walon. He's been two rods short of a hyperdrive since he was a cadet. I read your reports, we all did. And now he's gone feral. I know he's fresh back from hell but… we have women and children here now. This can't-"

Righteous indignation was burning a hole in Vau's self control, and Skirata caught the warning claxon just as it hit critical mass. The sturdy old merc squared up, braced for a brawl, as Vau started to rise-

And a tiny noise from the cot stopped them both in their tracks.

Scorch was awake, his eyes wide and glassy and struggling to focus. He looked distraught.

Vau eased himself back down to the bed, placing an uncertain hand on Scorch's shoulder. He looked up at Skirata with a glare that promised conflict, but the heat behind it was diffuse, untargeted. "Not here, Kal."

"Later, then." It came out softer than he'd meant it to.

Walon nodded, turning away to focus entirely on Scorch.

Well. The conversation had been short and unproductive, but at least he’d tried. And managed to get a finger on the pulse of the problem. 

He paused at the foot of the bed and gave Scorch’s blanket-covered foot a gentle double-pat. “Get some sleep.” Neither the clone nor his  _ buir _ acknowledged him. He took it as his cue and beat a quiet retreat.

\- only to walk straight into a solid wall of snooping commandos in the hallway. They all looked hard-eyed and unsettled.

[Steady], he signed at them, stopping to lean back against the wall just outside the medbay. He closed his eyes and listened hard.

“We’ll leave. Me n’Sev. Take a ship and go.” Scorch’s voice, quiet and slurred.

"If there's any leaving to be done, it'll be the three of us,  _ ad'ika. _ But it isn't going to come to that."

"M'not leaving him again."

"Of course you're not. Neither am I." There was a pause, a rustling of shifting fabric. "He's going to be alright. Go back to sleep, son." 

The silence stretched long and heavy. He couldn't help himself- Kal held his breath and peeked discreetly around the doorframe.

Vau sat where he'd left him, sitting at the head of the bed, one long leg bent on the mattress with the boot resting on the opposite knee. A hand splayed tersely across his forehead to rub at his temples. The other had fallen to Scorch's crown- his last two fingers stroked slowly over the commando's hair.

Decades he’d known Vau-  _ decades- _ and not once had he seen him be gentle to any living creature save his stinking murderous strill. The sight made something tighten in his guts. He almost felt guilty for intruding.

Just as he started to pull back with tactical slowness, Kal caught the faint grating of a whispered promise from Vau. 

"He's going to be alright."

Vau was going to make it damn hard to stay angry at him. Kriffing  _ hell. _

  
  


\-------

These boys. These boys were going to be the death of him. 

And each other, possibly, but  _ definitely _ him.

Scorch was sleeping again, his brain heavy with painkillers and bacta, and here he was still hovering like a broody nuna. 

It was horribly out of character, he mused. Karking Skirata must be rubbing off on him.

Agitated, Walon reached over to the metal tray on the bedside table and picked up Sev’s knife. It was clean now, scrubbed free of the dark clotted blood by his own hands while Mij had dealt with the mess it left behind.

Scorch had been massively fortunate. It had only nicked the artery when it pierced his liver, and the damage Mij hadn't been able to stitch would heal itself without much fuss as long as nothing went awry. 

It was a beautiful blade, he mused. Beskar. Finely crafted. It had been his own knife for years, but he’d drawn it and given it to Sev on their journey home from his rescue. He’d been a wreck, thin and wild-eyed, all raw animal violence and vicious instinct. He’d adopted him then, made him his son with a few hushed, hurried words. He’d been proud of him- and spared himself a little pride as well, for training a soldier who could survive such a trial. But now the knife had been quenched in his brother’s blood, and he had the unsettling realization that not only had he built the survivor, he had built the unrepentant killer, as well.

As he sat there turning Sev's blade over and over in his hand, a memory snuck up on him from the depths. And something shifted like an old lock finally presented with the matching key.

As a young man, still freshly kitted out and bristling with hormonal fervor, Walon had been taken to an armorer in Keldabe. He had tried to maintain an air of cool neutrality, but the burly woman at the forge had noticed his eyes wandering over her work and called him over.

She had brought him to her bench and showed him the row of half-finished knives laying on a thick sheet of leather. He'd picked one up, a gleaming spike of beskar, and she'd laughed in her thick northern accent. 

"That one shines, but it'll kill you, boy."

He remembered the heat of embarrassment and anger in his cheeks as she took the knife from his hands. 

"Wasn't finished right. It'll end a man-" she flicked it down to stab into the tabletop- "but any other work?" She popped it free from the wood and picked up a red-splotched apple from her lunch bag, turning the blade sideways to pare off a thick sliver of fruit from the whole. With a tweak of her wrist, she broke the piece free-

And the whole knife shattered into wicked shards. He had jumped a parsec at the noise it had made.

She'd laughed again. "Beskar is a fickle metal. Temper too little and she goes dull. Too long and she'll kill you as quick as your enemy."

He had, he realized now, missed her lesson entirely. 

His sons were blades much like that one. He had been handed raw iron and asked to forge it into deadly weapons, keen and thirsty, and he had heated and hammered them until they held fine points and glowed bright as Mandalorian iron. 

He had tempered them, by blood and fire, to survive. But he had never taught them how to live. Never quenched them, as Skirata had with his boys. He had sneered and taunted the other trainer for his sentimentality, and felt a deep sense of validation when his squads had returned mostly whole from the slaughter at Geonosis. But now Skirata's boys were back, and while a bit dull, they could function. He could roll his eyes at them all day long, but they were still men when the fighting stopped.

At least they could wake without killing their brothers.

Well. Not killing. He looked down at the boy asleep on the med center cot- not a boy any longer, really. Not by a longshot. But drugged into slumber with his gut stitched and bandaged, his jaw slack and hair mussed from its curls, he looked so much like the young cadet again that it threatened to choke him.

"What happens to the knife now?" He had asked the armorer.

She had smiled and pried the deadly shards from the apple. "The metal is still good. Melt it down and start over."

Start over.

He would have to try. For Scorch's sake. For Sev's. For his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:
> 
> ad- son or daughter  
> ad'ika- the diminutive of 'ad'- meaning little one, son, daughter, of any age, also used informally to adults much like 'lads or 'guys'  
> beskar- an alloy used in Mandalorian armor, notable for its high tolerance to extreme forms of damage  
> buir- parent (gender neutral, can mean mother or father)  
> cu'bikad- Indoor game that involves stabbing blades into a chequered board - a cross between darts, chess and ludo  
> karyai- main living room of a traditional north Mandalorian house - a single big chamber for eating, talking, resting  
> Kyrimorut- a remote bastion and stronghold located in the northern hemisphere of Mandalore, and the home of Clan Skirata. It also served as as a refuge for any clone trooper or commando who wished to desert the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars, or the Empire afterwards.  
> udesii- calm down, take it easy, settle  
> yaim- home


End file.
